


Grok

by Chibifukurou



Category: Stargate Atlantis, Stargate SG-1
Genre: Alternate Universe - Apocalypse, Cannibalism, Community: apocalyptothon, Famine - Freeform, Gen, Wordcount: 1.000-5.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-19
Updated: 2011-08-19
Packaged: 2017-10-22 19:46:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,864
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/241868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chibifukurou/pseuds/Chibifukurou
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Grok means to understand so thoroughly that the observer becomes a part of the observed—to merge, blend, intermarry, lose identity in group experience.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Grok

**Author's Note:**

  * For [infinimato](https://archiveofourown.org/users/infinimato/gifts).



> This story was heavily influenced by Robert Heinlein's story Stranger in a Strange Land. Whenever I read or write something about cannibalism I remember Grokking and how it was used as a sign of a family growing closer.
> 
> Disclaimer: I don't own anything. This story was written for personal enjoyment and entertainment purposes.

There are many defining events in a man's life. Some that are obvious, and some that are not. The event that would forever define Rodney Mckay's life during the Great Famine was a funeral. Not just any funeral mind you. In his years on Atlantis he'd been to plenty and they'd had less and less affect as the years marched on.

Until finally the only thing that stuck was the failure that had led to the death.

It was different with Torren though. He'd been more than just Teyla's baby by the end. He'd been cherished nephew and godson to all three of male members of the team. Rodney had tried to teach him math and the alphabet, while John took him flying, and Ronen gifted him with hand whittled wooden animals and toys.

They were burning him with his favorite wooden top and a teddy bear Zelenka had managed to procure from somewhere, back before he'd left them, hoping to make his way back home. The stuffed toy had been made of gauze and a patchwork of old clothes, but Torren had loved him all the same.

Maybe it would have been different if they had buried him, but there was something about seeing Teyla lay his little body on the funeral pyre that struck a nerve. The fact that they had to burn his tiny little body, to make sure some enterprising soul didn't steal his body to feed their family just felt wrong.

Sacrifice might come naturally to their team, but cooking their own young wasn't a line any of them were willing to cross. Not yet anyway. Rodney wanted to think they'd never do it, but he knew the lengths their family would go through to keep each other alive.

He could already hear the gnawing hunger stealing his strength away. The shakes just kept getting worse and he suspected he'd started losing time. That was hard to track though, since he hadn't told the others yet.

They all knew that he was Hypoglycemic, but he'd been careful not to mention how the famine exacerbated his symptoms. Making his body go haywire.

If his sister, Maddie, had been their then he'd have never gotten away with it. They'd lost contact with her and her family two months back. Rodney tried not to think about people eating Jeannie. It was hard not to though. Particularly as the smell of Torren's burning body filled the alleyway where they had taken shelter.

If he had to die, Torren should have been sent off with a big ceremony. Instead it was just the four of them, huddled around the fire listening to Teyla's thirst roughened voice singing a soft lullaby to him

John's deeper voice joined in, choked by his stifled sobs. More than losing his sister's family, more than being separated from the rest of the Atlantis expedition, even more than his own death, for Mckay this moment would forever defined the desperation that the famine brought with it.

= = = =

Daniel poked the fire with a stick, trying to stir a few last minutes of warmth out of the greasy rags and broken furniture he'd managed to scrounge. He couldn't help but think about how much easier things would be if he had Jack and T'ealc to back him up.

That was unfair though, there was no way they could have known that SG-1's mission to find trading partners from whom they could get food, would end when a home-grown terrorist organization thought that the best way to prove their unhappiness with the government was to blow up government installations.

The terrorists hadn't know that NORAD was a front for something a lot more important, but what they did or didn't know didn't really matter once Cheyenne Mountain had collapsed and buried the Star Gate and everyone in Star Gate command with it.

Daniel liked to think that Sam, Jack, and Teal'c had made it though the Stargate before the end came, but he would probably never know. That was the worst part, what made him wish he hadn't had to go to a meeting about using the Abydosians arid farming techniques to get the country through the drought. The meeting hadn't even mattered in the end.

The Agriculture Agency had collapsed when the Government filed for bankruptcy. So now he was alone in a house in the middle of nowhere. Only bothering to stay alive so that if by some off chance SG-1 made it back to Earth he'd get to see them again.

= = = =

Jack stared down at the feasting masses. PX-whatever was a virtual utopia. There was more than enough food to go around, and the idea of almost global hunger was almost unconscionable to the gentle natives.

If the Star Gate had still been working they would have been able to work something out. They'd have had a chance to keep their people alive and fed, and maybe they'd have even been able to keep the country fed.

Instead he had to stand her at a harvest festival watching as the people dance and feast, while images of Daniel emaciated and dying in a ditch dance through his head. He was a soldier. He'd seen starvation and famine before. The pain and havoc it reached, it was hard thinking about the horrors that were raining down on his country, the same country he'd spent his whole life fighting for, becoming a desolate wasteland.

When a server passed by, carrying a tray of potent fruit wine, he grabbed a tankard and chugged it down. He'd fallen into the bottle after Charlie and had sworn he'd never do so again. At the time, just after meeting Daniel, he hadn't imagined a situation where he'd need to.

He'd never imagined that he'd be forced to stand by as a family member died again. Not even watching Daniel die from radiation poisoning had been this bad.

He grabbed another tankard and pretended not to notice Sam watching him with sad eyes or Teal'c moving to watch his back while he was intoxicated. He didn't want to think about how if Daniel had been their he wouldn't have just stood by. He'd have been in Jack's face yelling at him for giving in to his depression.

Daniel wasn't there though. He'd never be there again. Not after SG-1 had abandoned him halfway across the galaxy in the middle of a war zone. Taking another swig of wine, Jack let the haze of wine wrap around his mind and take him away from his memories.

He'd wake up screaming from dreams of Daniel being torn apart and eaten alive, but that wouldn't be for hours. For now he was at peace.

= = = =

John didn't blink when McKay, stumbled and fell. He'd been expecting it for awhile. He and Ronan had discussed it during the late nights, after Rodney and Teyla had fallen asleep.

Now they looked at each other over his collapsed body. Making sure that they were both ready to take this final step.

They were.

Ronan grabbed McKay's limp body and tossed him over his shoulder, while John took over Ronon's earlier duty of herding Teyla down the road. A gentle hand on her back was all that was needed to keep her moving. It was seeing her brought so low and feeling her rib bones against the palm of his hand that was hard.

He left Teyla and Rodney under Ronon's watchful gaze as he snuck up to the next inhabited house they came to. Hunting knife gripped in his hand he tried to prepare himself for what he was going to do. He'd never crossed this line before, no matter how close he came.

He'd done a lot of bad things in his years in the army, but hunting another human being wasn't on that list. Still, when his only choices were to watch his family die or to kill an innocent stranger he'd do what he had to do.

He snuck up to the back door of the house, and slipped inside the kitchen. Only to be met with the muzzle of a gun and a familiar face.

= = = =

There was plenty of food in Daniel's home. Vegetables from the scraggly garden he's managed to cultivate in the drought ravaged front yard and meat from a location none of them will admit to knowing.

Oddly enough the cannibalism bothered Rodney less than he expected and bothered John far more than he could have ever dreamed. More than once Rodney's found him curled up in some corner of the house or yard, smelling of sour bile and partially digested meat. John tries to go vegetarian every few days only to have one of his team, usually Rodney, force the meat on him. They can't afford to become anemic. What little medicine they have left won't fix iron deficiency and they don't have any way to get something that could.

Daniel does his best to make the meat last, smoking and salting it, but there are limits to how long it can last. The day after Rodney catches him ruminating over an empty root cellar, Daniel says he's going to go out and look for some "medicinal herbs". Rodney invited himself along.

= = = =

They find dinner living at the edge of Colorado Springs. There are men who deserve death more, but they can't afford to get sick because they picked up someone who was sick or hyped up on drugs. So they kill him, making it as fast as they can. Daniel's learned a lot from his time on SG-1 and Rodney is stubborn. It's only a matter of minutes before they're standing over a carcass. Daniel whispers an Abydosian prayer and Rodney is reminded of an old science fiction book he'd read as a child, one where the next Messiah came to earth and brought faith to the masses, complete with ritualized cannibalism.

They roll the carcass onto a travois, made out of scraps from the alley the man was squatting in. Then they begin the arduous task of dragging him back to the house.

They only stop once, so that Rodney can run into an old, abandoned public library and grab a copy of Stranger in a Strange Land. He could remember thinking it was maudlin when he'd read it, but it would hopefully help John make peace with the life they were being forced to live.

He snuck into John's room late that night, after he'd helped Daniel hoist the body to hang by its ankle's from one of the root cellar's rafters. There'd be fresh meat for them all to eat in the next couple days. Until then he'd just have to hope that the book worked. The next few days he alternated between helping Daniel prepare their prey and watching as John made his way through the book.

When Daniel brought the first pot of meat stew to the table, John ate it with the same hunger as everyone else. Rodney felt a knot of tension unwrap from around his stomach. They might never be the same again, but now at least they all had a chance to survive, together.

= = = =

The End


End file.
